Senate Republicans fell seven votes short Monday of passing legislation to strip Planned Parenthood of federal funding, in the wake of undercover videos highlighting the group’s participation in providing aborted fetal organs to human tissue companies.
Just one Republican, Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois, joined Democrats to defeat the legislation down a mostly party-line vote, which needed 60 votes to pass but garnered only 53.
Republicans managed to gain the votes of Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, two Republican women who support abortion rights, with two Democrats: Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Joe Donnelly of Indiana.
The legislation would have blocked about 700 Planned Parenthood clinics around the country from receiving Title 10 family planning funds or Medicaid dollars, even though those dollars can’t be used for abortions. Instead, the funds would have been made available to federal community health centers, which are banned from offering abortions at all.
Republicans said Planned Parenthood shouldn’t be getting federal funds amid ongoing federal and congressional investigations into whether the women’s health and abortion provider broke the law by profiting financially from the donation of fetal body parts or by performing partial-birth abortions.
And they stressed that their bill would maintain the same level of federal dollars available to health centers that provide care to low-income women.
“There would be absolutely no reduction in overall federal funding available to support women’s health,” said Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, the bill’s primary sponsor. “Community health centers provide more comprehensive services, regardless of a person’s ability to pay.”
But Democrats aired concerns that withholding federal funding from Planned Parenthood clinics, which accounts for 41 percent of the group’s revenue, would result in a huge patient influx into already overburdened community health centers. The centers, which serve many low-income Americans who are uninsured or on Medicaid, are already seeing their patient loads grow with the Affordable Care Act’s coverage expansions.
“There aren’t enough community health centers,” said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. “To increase their ability to meet the current demand and to throw in a few more women who would be knocked out of Planned Parenthood — it would be millions of women — is wrong.”
